"There is now a clear, concerted effort from America’s political, cultural and business elites to demonise Musk and Musk-era Twitter. Even US president Joe Biden has got involved. At the weekend, he branded Twitter an ‘outfit that sends and spews lies all across the world’. The New York Times similarly claims that under Musk ‘misinformation and hate speech would be allowed to proliferate on the platform’. And the NGO crowd has organised a #StopToxicTwitter campaign, calling on businesses to stop advertising on Twitter. Not that large corporations need much encouragement. Within days of Musk’s takeover, Twitter’s 20 largest advertisers – including United Airlines, General Motors, Anheuser-Busch, Disney and Procter & Gamble – confirmed that they were either considering a spending pause on Twitter advertising or had already implemented one. In effect, an alliance of campaigning NGOs, the mainstream media, woke corporations and sections of the American political establishment have declared war on Musk. They are determined for Twitter to remain an intensely regulated social-media platform. Essentially, this coalition wants to ensure that the woke elites retain their role as social media’s gatekeepers."
